Saturday, May 30, 2015

A Huge Day with Pale Male, Octavia, and the Eyasses, plus Irate Blue Jays and Mocking Birds

All times PM3:43:06 Octavia feeds the eyasses

3:50 PM Pale Male does sentinal duty from a light fixture on the Carlyle.

4:14:18 Octavia who has been sheltering Little from the sun with her head tucked, suddenly untucks her head and looks towards Pale Male. She looks a little done in. Dealing with toddlers with sharp faces and feet is not a job for the lazy or faint hearted.

4:22:21 Nothing seems particularly untoward about Pale Male though he does seem to be focusing up.

4 47 07 Pale Male heads South with speed and goes all the way down Fifth Avenue to the 7th window on the Lions Building.

4 54 59 Let us digress just a moment as many of you may not be familiar with the "Lion"Building as it is further down Fifth Avenue than is usual for "nest reports"and it isn't that common a perching spot these days. (Perhaps is was used more often during the salad days of Pale Male when a flock of crows fought the hawks in a turf war. This was before West Nile virus decimated the Crow population in the area.)

Look up at the left hand corner of the photo see the Lion? Hence the name. It is located past Linda, then a second adjoined building and then comes The Lions building.

Enough digression back to our saga.

Pale Male has gone rather far down Fifth Avenue not only to possibly elude his tormenters and get them away from the nest but also note he is perched in a recessed window with a "ceiling" so the angry birds will have more difficulty nailing him in the head.

5 05 05 Pale Male ducks. It was so fast I didn't even see the bird that dive bombed him.

5 05 48 Pale Male slowly stands up.

5 07 17 He has to duck again.

5 07 17 Then he's suddenly gone. Where? I grab my stuff and head as fast as I can back toward the Hawk Bench and a view of the nest.

5 13 24 Back at the nest one of the eyasses is doing some very serious flapping and there is no mom in sight. WHAT?5 15 58 Octavia is on a window of the building called Barbara Walters...another structure that isn't used very often. Where is Pale Male?TO BE CONTINUED...stay tuned.